Gaming among the Baobabs: Into the wilderness with a tent and a Playdate

Trivia time. Did you know, there’s no precise definition of a tree. All sorts of distantly related plants can be trees if they stump for it. Grasses, ferns, or really anything with a trunk and a dream. Scientists have tried to impose some rules on the chaos. But, basically, if it looks like a tree, and it’s big enough and sturdy enough then, sure, let’s call it a tree. Baobab trees, I suspect, tow the line. They’re strange, squat things — hollow in the centre with branches all skewiff at the crown and flush with alien-green fruit pods. In Tanzania’s northern savannahs, they pepper the landscape; quixotic giants towering above the sea of acacias. In some places, they’re also the only trees suitably thick and thornless to act as backrest for a shaded gaming session.

Some context is probably warranted here. I’m an anthropologist — a researcher who studies us, humans, in all our tremendous diversity. In service of documenting one small part of that diversity, my work takes me deep into the Tanzanian bush, with a tent, a Land Rover, and a crate of tinned food. I am also a capital-G Gamer. Gaming is my refuge. My happy place. My way to unwind after a hard day’s work. And though I love my work, sometimes the dust, the heat and the occasional run-ins with elephants do wind one tight.

Unfortunately, gaming and fieldwork don’t readily mix. The Tanzanian wilderness, with its stunning scenery, doesn’t lack much, but it does lack plug sockets. This is an impediment for gaming in so many ways, not least because there’s nowhere to power your RGB light strips. I suppose the easiest solution is to take a break. Crack a book; touch grass; digitally detox. And by all means, that sounds fabulous, but if you’re in as deep as I am, there’s another option: become your own sort of tree and draw power from the sun.

If you want to spread your leaves, you need three things. First, a whopping great solar panel with an output of at least 30 watts; preferably more; preferably more than one. Second, a hefty power bank with a hefty throughput. Third, a portable games console. All that’s left is to brush off the dirt, check the tent for scorpions and complete your metamorphosis from Bear Grylls to videogamedunkey.

Those, at least, are the basics. But like most things, it’s not always so simple. First there’s the electricity problem. The power-management meta-game. Energy is needed for almost everything. Want to take photos? Juice. Want to check emails or call your spouse on a tenuous EDGE internet connection? Juice! Jumpstart the car in an emergency? Juice please! Data backup? Juice, juice, juice. So, you must ruthlessly optimise. You must juggle all these tradeoffs and leave some power in the bank for a literal rainy day. Those brief, baobab-shaded gaming sessions can’t last long, and they need to count.

Then, of course, there’s the console itself. The Steam Deck is handily the most capable, but it’s an absolute unit and, left unsupervised, will gormandize two days’ solar energy in a gulp. The Switch is the evident frontrunner, but the launch models have terrible power efficiency and apparently I’m forbidden from buying a Switch Lite just to play Xenoblade in a tent. My usual solution is to dust off the DS, buy some yesteryear-RPG on eBay and do my eyes and spine a mischief hunching over the tiny screen. But this time I got a better offer. Eurogamer’s own Chris Donlan lent me the office Playdate.

The Playdate! You know the one. The custard yellow hipster console that looks like a Beemo from Adventure Time. Donlan’s haunted beermat. And it seems perfect, doesn’t it? It ticks every box. The battery lasts days. The monochrome screen sips power. It’s thin, it’s light, and it’ll slot into any pocket of any rucksack with room to spare. Also, might I add, it looks supremely photogenic juxtaposed against a backdrop of baobabs. So I left Chris to reconnect with his Game Boy, and headed off with the Playdate in my pocket.

And the Playdate is perfect. In so many ways. The games are charming little snacks. Sublime coffee-shop or park-bench fodder. A collection of whimsies and follies and sugary dainties that showcase the quirks and peculiarities of the hardware. But somehow they’re not nourishing. When you’re deep in the middle of nowhere, too hot and too tired, what you need is comfort food. Chicken soup for the soul; yorkshire puddings for the mind; a juicy RPG, with a nonsense plot and numbers that keep going up. What you do not need is Inventory Hero.

My goodness I tried. Each night, I crawled onto my sleeping mat, and loaded up Omaze or Demon Quest ’85 or Pick Pack Pup. These are each certified standouts yet, after a minute or two, the beam of my head torch would wobble and I would slump back and flip on an audiobook. By the third week of trying to fit the Playdate into my routine, I was actually going a bit spare. Not quite Apocalypse Now Brando, burbling about unspecified horrors, but closer than ideal. So I cut my losses. On a resupply trip, I snuck away, bought 10 gigs of mobile data, downloaded Steam Deck Tactics Ogre and gulped it down, spare power be damned. Nourishment.

My academic work is also about nourishment. About how rational people adjust their behaviour to prosper in different environments. How they carefully select the right foods and the right tools to forage them. The lesson I did not expect was that games, even portable games, have their correct places and times. It seems logical that baobab trees, with their water-sponging trunks and bone-dry acerbic fruit, are well adapted for the arid Tanzanian bush. But it seems less obvious some games should be better adapted for savannah-living than others. Yet, somehow, one’s environment snakes its roots into even this part of one’s life. And — you read it first on Eurogamer — the Playdate is not the correct console to play in a tent.

After all that faff though, it’s good, savannah gaming. I’m sure outdoors purists will blanch at the idea. Some people head to the wilderness to escape electronics. But just as there’s no easy definition of a tree, so too is there no one archetype of an outdoorsperson. With a little forethought, the wilderness will accommodate us gamers. And if you get it right: the right game, the right console, a gentle warm breeze and the chirrups and murmurs of the bush creatures around you, there’s really nothing better. Do note though, it has to be the right console.

The Playdate has its place too, of course. But it thrives where it was built to thrive. It thrives in the airport coffee shop. And it thrives on the flight back home.

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